It’s a known fact that colour affects how we feel and we often use colour-based phases to portray moods – ‘in a black mood’, ‘tickled pink’, ‘feeling blue’ etc. But when it comes to giving happiness a colour… is it all subjective?

We naturally sway more towards warmer, brighter colours, when it comes to explaining happiness, especially those in the red, yellow and orange spectrums. But our mind will only link these colours to happiness, if we have a happy experience of those colours.

For example, red can be indicative of both passion and danger. Yellow can be a warning or brightness, even blue hues can be seen as calming or cold.

Why? Well we often subconsciously link a colour back to how we perceive that colour in nature. For example, blue and green hues remind us of the sky, water, trees and grass, so we’re more likely to feel relaxed and calm with these colours.

However, if you had a traumatic experience in a grassy field or in a lake of water, you may well feel panicked and stressed around these colours! We store hundreds of references to each and every colour and, when we see this colour, we immediately associate our associated feeling to it – this is why we can sometimes feel a dislike for a particular colour, even when we don’t consciously remember the reference we may have attached to it!

This is often why colours can’t accurately be labelled as ‘happy’ or ‘calm’ colours – as it’s all a matter of personal preference (based on our internal representation of those colours)!

The only accurate way to define what colours represent happiness to you, is to spend time looking at different colours and seeing what feelings, moods and emotions they evoke in you.

Once you find the colours that make you feel positive and happy, then you can start incorporating them into your home decor, clothing and interior décor… because once you’ve found what makes you feel happy, you’ll want to ensure you surround yourself with it on a daily basis, to expand those positive vibes!